I followed the instructions and opened the 2017 template in visual studio 2017 community edition. the only include file that seems to work is AGK.h , the rest of them are all maked as errors (says it cant open them). its been a couple years since a worked with c++ , and ive never worked with visual studio before, much less its templates. I'm wondering if anyone can help me get this thing working? thanks for any help for advice in advance!

Not sure what the reason you are getting errors on the other headers. But usually it's path issues but I'm no expert on Tier 2 as I just mess with it a little bit. I would suggest a good dlc toAppGameKit Official Tier 2 Starters Guide which can be purchase on steam or appgamekit product page. It is a good reference guide for both windows and android tier 2 development from getting up in running in Visual Studios 2017 and Android Studio.